Microsoft had its annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday, and Steve Ballmer answered questions about what the company's answer to the iPad was going to be, and whether Windows Phone 7 was going to be a part of that product strategy. He said, "We're coming . . . We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows." Ballmer and Microsoft so don't get it. I can't believe Steve Ballmer is making me feel sorry for Microsoft.

A common urban myth amongst techies. Version 1 of the Mac OS was nothing like the Palo Alto system. It had been inspired by the work at Palo Alto but the system that emerged on the first mac had taken another couple of years of refinement. Just as Gauguin inspired Van Gogh - Van Gogh didn't "copy" Gauguin.

Yeah, I just summed it all up. They copied the 'ideas' from them, and improved upon them, like anyone else would have done.

In addition the system used at Palo Alto was nowhere near ready for the market let alone capable of being run on the current desktop systems. It took Apple to bring the GUI to the market place and to get the design fundamentals so strong that if you sat down in front of a version 1 Mac today you would know how to use it.

Interestingly what Job's and co didn't notice at Palo Alto was SmallTalk the underlying object based operating system behind the Palo alto desktop. So the first MacOS was written in Pascal (I think). But Jobs sure is a quick learner and when he founded Next after being ejected from Apple he made sure that OS was built use the same concepts of object based programming.

[q] Again, they didn't create the revolution, they just evolved it.

The same Gauguin - Van Gogh metaphor applies. Sure there had been demos of multitouch before, people dragging things around and resizing them ect but there was no practical system available in the market anywhere before the iPhone that used multitouch to actually get complex real world work done. When iPhone OS V1 launched you could use it to manipulate photos, play and manage music, play and manage movies, surf the web, manage your contacts, manage your diary, etec etc. Its was a real working system ready for the masses. Making interesting stuff in labs and putting together demos is kids play to actually making something work and making it ready for the market.

While I was referring to mostly to touch screens (my post was too long as it was) Multitouch is still just a gimmick on something so small, at least in my opinion. On a larger screen it's much more useful.

It wasn't truly ready, something as simple as multi-tasking and custom wallpapers were missing.

That mistaken concept of what constitutes market ready is why so many companies fail where Apple often succeed. Apple's design by iteration approach means starting with the pared down core functionality of what needs to be present to make something do its basic work. If the device is intended to play music all the work goes into making damm sure that its easier to play music on it than anything else. Apple avoids bundling extra functions for the sake of it. Get the core basic right and then you can build. and that's why they can then proceed to role out such a steady and solid programme of upgrades and improvements.

That logic only applies to Apple fans who 'take what they can get'. So that Apple can say "Hey guys, look at how AWESOME version 4.0 of our OS is! We can (kind of) Multitask! And you can put in custom wall papers! How cool is that! Oh and our Multitasking is so original (oh, we just copied Symbian)."

Apple's technology is about 90% evolutionary and 10% revolutionary.

By the way this has gotten way off topic. We all know (or hope or think) that Microsoft will fail in the tablet arena. Apple's one success comes from being in the hearts and minds of... well most people would use the term "Average Joe" but I'll use the term moron.

Most geeks don't like it 'cause there aren't standard ports, most geeks would prefer a full PC capable tablet, rather than a giant iPod touch. Apple is trendy right now. Microsoft having so many years of bad press has filtered down to most of these morons, with Television News talking about Viruses on Windows and more public knowledge of the different issues.

I've had far too many conversations with "Apple fans" who have the thought that Apple can do no wrong, and they should just goose step and sing "In Jobs we trust".

I'll be honest, at one point I was thinking about buying a Mac, but then I would probably have just put Linux. This was when they were PPC. When they switched to Intel I couldn't see the point. I'm more about the Hardware than the OS anymore, but it could have been fun to play with.